


after

by sulfuric



Series: totl verse [5]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Freeform, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Reflection, Time Skips, as you can probably tell i have no idea how to tag this, basically the events of the year after totl, featuring some heavy friendship and melancholy vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 07:43:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10157804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulfuric/pseuds/sulfuric
Summary: thomas gets released from WICKED. this is the year that follows.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this one is for [isaac](http://isaacoftheinternet.tumblr.com), totl's #1 fan and one of the people im most grateful to have met in this amazing fandom. :'))
> 
> this fic is literally what the description says, the year directly after totl ends. i had a lot of fun writing this and getting to explore all the little moments ive had in my head for so long. i miss this universe so so much. definitely more to come (and that fuckiNg sequel.. i know) also if you havent read totl this might be... confusing but like go for it if u want (or u can read my [46k angst fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4479599/chapters/10183481) just to understand this 2.4k oneshot.. whatever suits yr fancy..
> 
> warning for a very very brief mention of food/vomiting about halfway through (vi). also this is Barely edited so. do with that what you will

**xii.**

he gets out of the facility and is welcomed home by warm and loving arms. the short rest of his summer is spent relearning how to be a person. it’s hard - there’s a lot missing. he gets to rebuild some things and start others all over again. he feels like an artist, painting in the spaces of him left blank. he tries his best to fill himself with starlight (like the galaxies teresa adorned her canvases with). sometimes the brush shakes in his hands but he has his friends and his family there to help steady his grip.

he likes how reinvention tastes. he tells minho, one afternoon, with his back pressed against the base of a tree, “i could do anything.” that week they try golf, fishing, kayaking, knitting, soccer, cooking, swimming, and yoga. kayaking sticks. he likes the feeling of gliding through the water, like nothing can hold him back. he spends his nights reading - fiction, nonfiction, news articles, poetry - anything. he looks for inspiration with bleary eyes between the lines of his computer screen. in mid august, he finds it in an article about something called neurobiology.

he sits for teresa a few times, finding that he actually doesn’t mind having to stay still for hours. he likes the way she looks when she’s completely focused on a painting, oblivious to the outside world. peaceful. he likes seeing her slowly start to paint more and more, passion returning with each flex of her fingertips. she paints everything, from flowers to trees to oceans to mountains to galaxies to thomas to minho to brenda.

there’s that, too. minho and brenda. they’re happy together, really happy. thomas was afraid it would be awkward - for as long as he could remember, it had been him and minho and newt, the mighty gladers and no one else. but brenda had slid right into thomas’ life with no difficulty. teresa had connected with her and minho just as quickly, if not quicker. the three were already well on their way toward friendship by the time thomas had come home, and a month later the four of them were practically one unit. it’s definitely a different dynamic than thomas is used to, but it’s _good_.

  


**xi.**

the first day of senior year brings about one of the Firsts - First first day of school without newt. it feels weird and wrong and _bad_ , but there’s nothing to do but get through it. he does. he likes how he can walk through the hallways without dozens of eyes following him. no one cares and it’s amazing. chuck still puts skittles in with thomas’ medication. he doesn’t throw a single one down the drain.

he turns seventeen without newt. another First. it hurts, but it’s also his First birthday with teresa and brenda, which makes it hurt a bit less. it falls on a saturday that year, so the four of them go up to a lake and spend the day there. when the sun goes down, they lay on the dock and count the shooting stars (meteors, _apparently_ ).

 

  
**x.**

the nightmares come back, slowly but surely. never as bad, but just as frequent and just as horrifying. the pill box gets heavier, doctor’s visits more frequent. dr. paige set him up with a good specialist in his town - thomas doesn’t like him quite as much, but he doesn’t mind him either.

he can’t even begin to describe the terror that surges through him with every symptom he recognizes. _is this what relapse feels like?_ he asks himself constantly, analyzing every thought that flies through his mind. he misses three days of school and cries in teresa’s arms for what feels like hours on the third night. she strokes his hair without a word.

he knows the new medication won’t start making a difference until at least two weeks go by, and every second until then feels like walking through a minefield. he throws back skittles like it’s religion. he hates what it does - what he does - to his parents and chuck, but he doesn’t know how to stop it. he’s falling. he starts to hear things again, but the worst part is that he doesn’t know if they’re actually hallucinations or just the result of his paranoia _about_ having hallucinations again. he calls minho in the middle of the night and they drive out to the middle of nowhere and scream until their throats go raw.

october is not a good month.

  


**ix.**

he visits jorge in his office and thinks about how strange it is to have been to his guidance counsellor’s house for multiple barbeques. he doesn’t really feel like a guidance counsellor but a friend, now. he was brenda’s uncle and guardian and that meant he was kind of a part of thomas’ ever-growing family. he always smiles at that thought.

one day in november, he’s sitting opposite jorge in his office (no acid no knots no secrets) and cracks each knuckle. “is there even a program like that? where i could study things like what happened to me?” he asks, chemistry and biology textbooks sat in his lap. they don’t smell like hatred anymore. jorge only laughs, rifling through a drawer and pulling out a thin pamphlet. he leafs through it, getting out a big red pen and circling something before tossing it to thomas and putting his feet up on his desk, like he always does. thomas opens the pamphlet and he quietly mumbles the words, encased in red circles: “bachelor of science, major in neuroscience”

it sounds like possibility.

  


**viii.**

christmas comes and goes. yet another First without newt. thomas gets him a gift anyways - the newest book in that series he likes; it came out in july. he leaves it at the grave, propped up against the stone. he’s pretty sure there are permanent depressions in the ground now, from all the times he’s knelt there.

it’s a cold winter. it seems like the wind doesn’t stop blowing, and thomas feels it in his bones. it feels like empty. thomas feels empty. it hurts just a bit more this time of year - newt always hated the winter. he hated it with a burning passion. the grumbling would never stop, and neither would the shivering. thomas can barely count the cold nights they’d spent huddled together, limbs tangled underneath blankets and half-empty mugs of hot chocolate abandoned on the kitchen table.

thomas always remembers to put on a scarf, newt’s scolding voice in his mind (not _in his mind_ , to thomas’ relief. there’s a difference, now.)

  


**vii.**

he decides to go and visit dr. paige one friday instead of going to class. teresa says _yes_ the instant he brings it up. she drives, of course. they make the three hour trip in just under four hours, tires rolling at a snail’s pace in the hard-packed snow. they all hug and they all cry and teresa shows her pictures of her newest pieces, including the ridiculous family portrait she’d forced thomas, brenda, and minho to take with her. (there were tacky sweaters involved, and she got the love in all their eyes just right.)

   
  
**vi.**

valentine’s day is spent on the floor of teresa’s bedroom. neither of them can drink so they eat abhorrent amounts of chocolate instead, a pile of foil wrappers accumulating in her trash bin. minho and brenda had their own plans for the night, but by 3 am thomas is puking up caramels and they somehow end up at teresa’s anyway. they laugh and they sing and they dance like they’ve never been torn apart.

they all end up crammed onto teresa’s tiny bed ( _at least it’s not a single,_ thomas thinks) sometime around 5 am but sleep avoids thomas like the plague. probably the sugar. he decides to climb up on teresa’s desk as carefully and quietly as he possibly can, lifting up the archaic window and sliding out onto the roof. it’s something the two of them did together nearly every night in the summer, but they hadn’t been out since early november.

their town is going through a bizarre week of warmth, but it’s still probably too cold for thomas to only have one pair of socks on. he shivers, but it’s not unwelcome. it’s that special kind of cold that almost invigorating, sobering. he tilts his head up toward the stars and wonders if newt is shining down at him.

teresa joins him shortly, just as awake as him. she wraps a blanket (knitted by her grandmother; she’d do one for her every month that teresa was in the hospital) around both of their shoulders and lets her head rest against his shoulder. a couple of minutes pass by. “i almost jumped, the night i admitted myself,” she whispers into him. on the horizon, the sky begins to bleed from black into blue.

“i’m glad you didn’t.”

  


**v.**

he sees newt’s mom in the grocery store. he’s picking up a cake for chuck’s birthday, idly watching the elderly woman pipe his brother’s name with great care. she’s made it to the _h_ when a familiar voice causes his head to snap upwards, heart rate rising instantly. their eyes meet and thomas almost throws up from the guilt that suddenly overwhelms his entire body.

tears prick in the back of his eyes and the rest of the world fades away. she puts her stalk of cauliflower back on the shelf and wheels over to him slowly, expression a mixture of disbelief and pain and relief and love all at once. thomas shakes, unable to speak. but he doesn’t have to. she brings her hands to the sides of his face and says his name quietly, knowing and loving and forgiving and it’s all thomas needs to collapse with his arms wrapped around her fragile frame, sobbing in the middle of the grocery store.

the woman behind the counter gracefully ignores the dozens of _i’m sorry_ ’s he whisper-wails into her shoulder, mindlessly cleaning the counters. newt’s mom pays for the cake and slips a scrap of paper with a number scrawled on it into his hands. “for when you’re ready,” she says with a smile. thomas commits the ten digits to memory.

  


**iv.**

he makes it to The Anniversary. thomas spends the day at minho’s, playing video games in his basement and eating pizza (meat lover’s with olives, of course). thomas isn’t sure if it makes him feel better or worse. once he goes home, he finds out that it was definitely _worse._ he knows he shouldn’t, and that it will break him, but he lets himself relive the night for the first time in months anyway. if he’s allowed to fall apart just once, it should be this day over any other.

he’s not sure how, but he ends up cradled into the corner of his bed with his phone pressed up against his ear, newt’s mom (lisa. he finally feels like maybe he can say her name again without wanting to throw up) on the other end. they decide to go for lunch the next weekend.

  


**iii.**

prom happens and thomas can’t help but thinking how fucking unfair it is that he took - _no._ no - how unfair it is that this was taken away from newt. (it’s not his fault. it’s not it’s not it’s not. he whispers it to himself like a bible verse, nails in place of rosary beads, digging into the flesh of his palms) he can’t help but think of the sunny tuesday in the tenth grade when a pure spectacle of a promposal took place in the cafeteria, only two rows from their own table. newt leaned over and chuckled in thomas’ ear. “better come up with a bloody good one of those for me.” and thomas fully intended to.

his stomach churns with the smell of alcohol. but he’s healing. and part of healing is ignoring the bile and dancing with your best friends, so that’s exactly what thomas does.

the girls look amazing - both teresa and brenda weren’t normally ones to dress up, so it was even more shocking and incredible to see them for the first time in their dresses. teresa in a flowing purple gown, streaks of pale blue matching the flowers strewn in her curled - actually curled - hair, and brenda in a tight thing, burgundy with a high neck and slit up the side. both were so unequivocally _them_ that it warmed thomas right to the core.

even minho looked incredible. not a shock, but still. they all dance together, not a single thought given to who was watching. once the night is over, they realize that it really isn’t. minho and brenda slip off to carry out their own plans (unspecified, thankfully) and thomas and teresa decide to spend the rest of their evening sat in a booth of a 24-hour diner, prom getups and all. they sip their milkshakes - vanilla for teresa, chocolate for thomas - and talk about where they think everyone will end up. it’s no movie moment by any means, but there’s certainly a type of magic to the night.

  


**ii.**

thomas almost can’t believe that he made it - a year ago, the thought wasn’t even in his mind anymore - but he graduates. there’s that slight bitterness to it under the surface, there always is and there might always be, but he tries to enjoy it as much as he can.

in just a few months everything will be different. minho and brenda are both going off to separate unis, both on sports scholarships, minho for track ( _of course_ ) and brenda for volleyball. he and teresa both choose the same school, in town, thomas for neuroscience and teresa for art history. it’s exciting and terrifying all at the same time. thomas isn’t scared that he and minho will drift apart. he knows they won’t.

the four of them (unsurprisingly) spend the entire summer together, savouring their last true moments of simplicity. it’s sweet and it’s not. thomas is pretty sure there’s something special about that july, something he won’t ever get back.

  


**i.**

there’s a day in early august when the date in the bottom right hand of his laptop display catches his eye. something about the combination of numbers seems so intimately familiar - he spends a good five minutes racking his brain until it hits him. of course. the day he came home.

an idea strikes him. it takes a bit of searching, but he finds it folded up in the bottom of a drawer, right where he left it nearly a year ago. how incredibly jarring it is to imagine the person that wrote the letter in his hands. thomas feels so distant from that version of himself, even though who he is now is so intimately tied to that stranger’s experiences.

he reads it once, then again.

exhale.

he is still healing, and that’s alright.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> feel free to come chat w me on my [tumblr](http://00250.tumblr.com)!


End file.
